“Access” and “access to”

The following excerpt is from an article on telephone fraud:

The senior citizen, a man in his late 70s, is embarrassed and doesn’t want to talk about it. And, relatives are scrambling to make sure the crook doesn’t access to his bank account.

When access is used as a verb, it does not require a “to” after it.

access: verb. To gain access to (data, etc., held in a computer or computer-based system, or the system itself)

access: noun. The state or faculty of being approached; accessibility.

As a verb, access is transitive; it has a receiver. It should be followed by the noun or pronoun that is its direct object:

Children can access the internet at school.

In this way you can access the database.

We want to make sure that the crook cannot access the old man’s bank account.

When used as a noun, access is followed by a prepositional phrase beginning with “to.”

The students have access to all the film databases.

This ticket grants access to the flower show.

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3 Responses to ““Access” and “access to””

  1. preciseedit on March 25, 2010 1:58 am

    I’m willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the writer of the faulty article: perhaps the writer simply forgot the word “gain.”

    “…crook doesn’t [gain] access to his bank account”

    But I’m nice like that.

    –Proofread carefully to see if you any words out. Right?

  2. Florence on March 26, 2010 9:38 am

    Access refers to a way of entering or reaching a place.
    The correct Verb access to. e.g many divorced fathers only have to their children at weekends

  3. rod on March 27, 2010 4:41 pm

    all of this reminds me of the statements. attend a place and attend to someone or something.
    there are many cases like this which should be clarified like listen, lie, say.explain. repeat and so on

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